Noticias de Abajo
To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
To the Sixth Commission of the EZLN
To the National Indigenous Congress
To the Indigenous Council of Government
To Maria de Jesús Patricio Martínez, Spokeswoman of the CNI-CIG
To the Peoples of the World who resist against the Capitalist and Patriarchal System
To the Original Peoples, Tribes, Nations, Communities and Neighbourhoods that were never conquered
Sisters and Brothers
Our struggle is for a dignified roof over our heads, and the bad government destroys our home and our history.
The prophecy: the monster with a thousand heads (evil) will come and divide the communities in two, will infiltrate into the heart of it, will deceive, will offer money, and will try to break it from within.
Because only by dividing can it impose death and destruction, the task is to weave ourselves into community as humans, as brothers and sisters, as children who belong to the great mother, this Planet Earth, that is, to organise ourselves because in the face of death we decide to live.
In these two days of work and organisation we met 800 people from the states of Michoacán, Querétaro, Veracruz, Estado de México, San Luis Potosí, Colima, Chiapas, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Nuevo León, Puebla, Quintana Roo, Baja California, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Oaxaca, Sonora, Guerrero, Yucatán, Chihuahua, Nayarit, Mexico City, as well as from different countries: Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Canada, Colombia, United States, Peru, Switzerland and Guatemala.
This 5th National Assembly for Water and Life was also attended by 200 delegates from the National Indigenous Congress – Indigenous Governing Council, from the Ñhöñhö, Purépecha, Mixe, Mayo, Wixarika, Yoreme, Nahua, Yaqui, Mazateca, Mixteca, Totonaco, Popoluca, Nuu Savi, Maya, Tepehuano, Guarijío, Rarámuri, Nayeri, Tzeltal, Tololabal, Zapoteco, Tohono Odam and Bini Zaa.
We declare:
On 19 February 2019, barely two months into the new six-year term, the murder of our comrade Samir Flores Soberanes would be the signal that the war against the peoples would continue. The murder of Samir and the attempt to launch the Morelos Integral Project was further proof that the new government would take up the neoliberal agenda of territorial reordering in order to link our country to the North American economy and thus put it at the service of transnational capital. Along with the Morelos Integral Project, the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Mayan Train, the Felipe Angeles International Airport and other large-scale projects and megaprojects, the neoliberal nightmare spread throughout the country hand in hand with militarisation and organised crime. What in the past the bad governments called Plan Puebla Panama and then the Mesoamerica Project, the current bad government renamed it, always using the surname ‘Well-being’ to try to hide the dispossession, displacement, destruction and death.
In order to move forward with the capitalist reorganisation of the national territory, the new ruling elite has recovered strategies of cooptation and simulation, such as indigenism, from their ancestors. As if it were mere spectacle, the presidency and its communication advisors staged a big show to hand over a supposed baton to the current overseer, thus failing to tell the truth, and also failing to respect history, memory and the spirit of our peoples. This simulation, it should be noted, has been taken up again with the person who will occupy the presidential chair from October onwards.
For its part, the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI) has launched a whole media and political operation to make people believe that dispossession and death have the approval of the peoples. In Sonora, for example, with the Yaqui people, an apparent Justice Plan was put in place that in fact favours the dispossession of water to supply the mining industries and the imposition of the gas pipeline, while the murder, torture and disappearance of several members of the tribe continued.
In Oaxaca and Veracruz, the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a project promoted by imperialism for two centuries, is advancing hand in hand with those who claim to defend the sovereignty of the country. But the peoples, collectives and organisations continue to resist not only the megaproject, but also organised crime and the repression that comes with it.
In the Yucatan peninsula, in the Mayan territory, we, the people, see our underground rivers and cenotes (underground lakes) polluted, we see our territories destroyed by the so-called Mayan train, a train that is accompanied by organised crime, by violence, by the increase in the disappearance of children and young people, by the increase in violence and also by the increase in suicides. At the same time we see the wealth of breweries and pig farms, real estate companies and agribusinesses that extract our water that was protected by Mother Earth for thousands of years and that have now exposed it to pollutants. Towns and communities that once accepted the train for the promise of development, now regret it in the face of ecological devastation and the arrival of crime.
In Santa María Ostula, in Michoacán, the town that alerted us to the link between mining companies, organised crime and bad government, today we see the intensification of the war, the drones dropping bombs, the armies of criminal corporations seeking to exterminate the people in resistance. And we also see, as in so many other geographies, an accomplice state.
In Chiapas, the Zapatista peoples are resisting the brutality of the war that has been installed throughout the state, a war that displaces entire villages, that increases forced disappearances, that traffics in people, especially women and children. And there, in what is today the epicentre of the war, in Chiapas, the Zapatistas teach us that another world is possible and that, organised with others around the world, we can wrest freedom from the state for our compas. In the midst of so much pain, a flash of joy and smiles brought us the freedom of our comrade José Díaz Gómez. This assembly joins the demand for a stop to the war against the Zapatista peoples and a stop to the war in all of Chiapas and Mexico.
In Mexico City, the Otomí community resists from the Casa Samir Flores Soberanes and teaches us that to fight for decent housing is also to fight for autonomy. In response, the Otomí community receives threats of eviction and repression. From this assembly we make it clear: all our solidarity with the Otomí community living in Mexico City and stop the criminalisation of the community and of our comrade Diego García. We demand that all of their demands be met. We declare ourselves on alert for any aggression they may receive.
And in Guerrero, the families of the 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa tell us that their dignity is not for sale, that they have been mocked and snubbed by this government that decided to protect the military and leave the truth and justice for another time. This 5th National Assembly for Water, Life and Territory also says: we are missing 43 comrades and thousands more.
Returning to the route of Luis Echeverría in 1975 and the creation of the National Council of Indigenous Peoples (CNPI), the INPI of the traitor Adelfo Regino, on 29 February 2024 created an apparatus with exactly the same name, an instrument to simulate dialogue and to try to diminish the independent indigenous movement, that which does not surrender, does not sell out and does not betray. As a vindication of contempt and simulation, the new apparatus of domination of the peoples took up the same slogan that has been our cry of struggle: ‘Never again a Mexico without us’. In its route of plunder, and as a complement to co-optation and demobilisation, the INPI elaborated and published in the official gazette of the federation, in the framework of the international day of indigenous peoples, 9 August 2024, a National Catalogue of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples and Communities, a ‘Catalogue’ that is in reality a war plan: a plan to eliminate our peoples and dispossess our territories. Along with the catalogues, the magical peoples, the simulation of justice and the staging, the INPI itself, always at the service of the foreman, has promoted or legitimised assemblies or consultations that do not comply with the forms and traditions of the peoples. Recently, the same INPI has taken up legal reforms that were discussed more than 25 years ago and that today do not correspond to the demands and problems of our regions.
For the peoples, Water is sacred, because it gives us life, it gives us existence, it gives us food, it gives us medicine. That is why we ask permission from the territory, that is why we do not betray it, we do not sell it. If the land and the water get sick we get sick too, if the water dies, we and all life ends. If the water no longer falls, nothing flourishes, nothing lives.
It is easy for them, those at the top, to look at our territory and identify the sources of water, minerals and fertile land, to lay roads, railways, gas pipelines, to transport goods and supply industry, it is easy for them to look at the map and decide which population to displace and eliminate.
In this bloody war that is nothing more than a continuation of the one that began more than 500 years ago, we the peoples continue in resistance, we continue to walk in this territory called Mexico, in this home called the World, and in this walk we encounter our history and other peoples and communities.
In this space recovered by our sisters and brothers of the Otomí community living in Mexico City, which has become not only a place of resistance, but they have opened the doors for everyone who fights from below and to the left, who fights for Life. They say that there are no more peoples in the city, they say that we can be counted and caricatured in a catalogue, they say that there is no more resistance, in the north, south, east, centre and west of the country, they say that the peoples no longer exist, and we tell them that the original peoples and nations exist because we resist. Those at the top want us to forget that we are part of Nature, but we are determined to defend our Mother Earth.
In this 5th Assembly we heard old and new forms of dispossession and destruction, grabbing, drilling of wells for industry, construction of pipelines that, pretending to fulfil the right to water, divert it to industry and the city, granting of unlimited concessions for industry, mining and business, while the population is limited to one day or even hours of access to water, which is almost always contaminated.
The six-year term is ending, and contrary to what they promised, neither the war nor the dispossession is ending. Worse still, the next government promises continuity: a first floor for those at the top built on top of those at the bottom. The bankers and mega-rich can only be pleased. Their wealth and impunity are growing.
The struggles that have flourished in our peoples for centuries and that in the last decades have survived the neoliberal modernisation and the so-called fourth transformation, are today growing in the struggle against war and the plundering of water. The struggles of the countryside and the city dialogue, share diagnoses and find that the exploiters have the same name in both places. The struggles are twinned. The struggle for water, life and territories must continue as long as those who govern do so for those at the top, using exploitation and domination, plunder and contempt.
Here we bring together struggles from very different geographies of the national territory, from the countryside, the sea and the city. Struggles that existed before this six-year term and struggles that flourished during this six-year term. We are here who agree to continue the struggle for life, from below, against capitalist exploitation under the new faces it has acquired.
This is our simple word, a balance of the six years that are ending and an announcement that our struggle continues in the six years that are beginning. The struggle for Water, Life and Territory continues, because to fight for Life is to fight against capitalism.
- We repudiate the mega-project of the inter-oceanic corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the misnamed Mayan Train, the Felipe Angeles International Airport and the Morelos Integral Project, among others.
- We repudiate the territorial reordering plans, the justice plans that are the instrument for dispossessing the territory, displacing the peoples in order to repopulate with new inhabitants who allow themselves to be subjugated by this system.
- We demand an end to the criminalisation of 9 Zapotec indigenous comrades and two Mixe indigenous comrades, with the aim of forcibly displacing them by accusing them of fabricating crimes.
- We demand an end to the criminalisation of the land and freedom camp of Mogoñe Viejo in the ITSMO of Tehuantepec.
- We repudiate the manipulation of the National Registry of Disappeared Persons to hide the more than 116,000 disappeared persons, and we also repudiate the cynicism of the bad government that even summoned disappeared persons to be polling station representatives.
- We condemn the 40 executions of members of the Indigenous and Popular Council of Guerrero – Emiliano Zapata.
- We demand the presentation alive of the 43 normalistas of Ayotzinapa and the thousands of disappeared, as well as the investigation and punishment of Omar García Harfuch for his possible links to this crime.
- We demand the presentation alive of Sergio Rivera Hernández from the Sierra Negra de Puebla for fighting against the construction of a hydroelectric dam.
- We demand an end to the violence against the communities of the southern highlands of Guerrero.
- We demand the immediate and unconditional release of María Cruz Paz of the Supreme Indigenous Council of Michoacán and the 5 prisoners of San Juan Cancúc.
- We demand the closure of trials, persecution and displacement against the Mazateca community of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca.
- We demand the definitive closure of the garbage dump in San Pedro Cholula, Puebla and an end to the persecution of Nahua comrades in the region.
- We repudiate the actions of CONAGUA against our communities by managing and guaranteeing the dispossession and contamination of our water.
- We demand punishment for those responsible for the murder of Samir Flores Soberanes, who fought against the Morelos Integral Project. His struggle, as well as his, are still alive in our resistance.
- We demand an end to the destruction of the water reserves of underground rivers and cenotes in the Yucatan peninsula, destroyed by the ill-named Mayan train, which is accompanied by an increase in the number of disappeared children and young people linked to barracks and drug trafficking cartels.
- We demand a halt to the destruction of the jungle in Calakmul in the Mayan territory of the Yucatan peninsula, with fires in the jungle legitimizing the change of land use to build hotels, casinos, for tourism, real estate speculation and agribusiness monocultures.
We demand justice for the Yaqui comrades disappeared and assassinated by the narco-state. - We demand the withdrawal of the state commission from the water wells of Santiago Mexquititlán and an end to the harassment of the community.
- We demand an end to the persecution and fabrication of crimes against the investigation of our comrade Hortensia Telésforo of San Gregorio Atlapulco, criminalized for participating in the recovery of the community library of the town.
- We demand that the investigation by the Supreme Court of Justice of the nation for the crime of torture against the Mexican state in Querétaro be taken over by the Supreme Court of Justice of the nation.
- We demand the release of José Alberto Cortez Sayes, Esmeralda of the Purépecha region in Michoacán.
Actions
- We call to accompany the action called in the Isthmus from 10 to 12 October in the framework of the days of the national call of the National Indigenous Congress, against megaprojects and gas pipelines.
- We call for the accompaniment of the fathers and mothers of the 43 normalistas of Ayotzinapa on 26 September 2024.
- We call to spread awareness of the consequences of militarisation in our territories and throughout the country.
- We call for the permanent accompaniment of the Community of Santa Maria Ostula Michoacan, in the demand for respect for the communal lands that it has in the town of Xayacalan, and the upcoming actions called as is the case of September 4, in the supreme court of justice for recognition by the judiciary through an amparo lawsuit filed.
- We call to accompany and follow up on the Second Regional Assembly of Cholulteca and Volcanic Peoples to be held on September 1, 2024 in the town of Coronango, Puebla.
- Participate in the calls of the National Indigenous Congress towards October 12, 2024.
- We call to join the 51st anniversary of the UPVA October 28th on October 28th 2024.
- Mobilisation for justice for Avelino Soberanes, 21 August 2024
- National march called by the UPVA October 28th, September 13th.
- We reaffirm that this building will continue to be the House of Indigenous Peoples and Communities Samir Flores Soberanes, guarded by the Otomi community living in the CDMX and together with them we occupy it fighting from below and to the left, taking up the principles of commanding by obeying.
- We announce that the Sixth National Assembly for Water, Life and Territory will take place in 2025. We will soon inform the place and date.
HAVING A ROOF OVER OUR HEADS IS A RIGHT
WATER, LAND AND FREEDOM
IT IS NOT DROUGHT, IT IS PLUNDER
UNTIL DIGNITY BECOMES CUSTOMARY
ZAPATA LIVES, THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES
Samir Flores Soberanes House, Mexico City, August 18, 2024
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*Coverage of the 5th National Assembly for Water and Life
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